This isn’t meant to take away anything from an amazing turnaround from last season.
But it seems like Razorback baseball is always one or two little things away from being really great and winning the College World Series. It seems we either have great hitting and not so great pitching or vice versa, but we can’t quite seem to put it all together in one year.
This year the hitting is pretty good, and Stephan and Knight have been good to great at times. But injuries took three other pitchers. Terrible timing for what could have potentially been four really good pitchers at one time. And our projected closers can’t throw strikes.
Even with all of that, we are one throw over the first baseman’s glove away from a division title. Untimely errors cost us maybe 5-6 games in the late innings.
The season isn’t over. We might still win the CWS, I know. Wish we could just catch a break though.
The LSU error did not cost Arkansas the division title. LSU finished 2.5 games ahead of Arkansas.
The Tennessee loss is the only other one I can think of that Arkansas lost as a direct result of an error. Most of the losses were the result of the offense getting shut down by a good pitcher or an Arkansas starter having a bad outing.
I’d argue Arkansas has caught some breaks this year. Not playing Florida and Kentucky during the regular season was a big break. The Razorbacks instead played Georgia, Tennessee and Missouri - three of the four worst teams in the East, and caught Vanderbilt on a down year.
Having the Grambling game rained out so that it didn’t hurt RPI and a potential host site was a break.
Arkansas got some breaks late in weird wins over Georgia and Kansas State.
Missouri’s first-round pitcher was interrupted by rain. That was a break. Auburn couldn’t throw its best pitcher, which might have kept the Hogs from being swept there.
You’re right that the one win over LSU wouldn’t have been enough to get us the division title, but that error would’ve been the 3rd out in the top of the 9th as I recall. It not only extended the inning, it allowed at least 1 run. Unless my memory is completely off (a possibility I admit), that’s a pretty direct loss as a result of an error.
I misread your post. My bad. You said the only other loss. I missed that. However, I thought it was 2 runs, I just wasn’t going out on a limb on whether it was 1 or 2. So, yeah, we lost two games as the direct result of late inning errors.
I didn’t mean the LSU error was the sole cause. It just seemed to me that it was a key moment that helped derail the momentum. It put a mental hex on us that we didn’t recover from immediately.
The LSU loss AND the TN rainout MAY have cost us the division title.
If we win that game two, we finish 19-10, and LSU would be 20-10.
Certainly no guarantee we would have won the third game against the Vols, we will never know.
but a win there would make us 20-10
And of course the error in the first game cost us that one.
And you can always go on and on like this…
But LSU baseball is what Texas football used to be for us.
It just doesn’t seem to matter if we are better than them or not, we find a way to lose to them.
And I hate 'em both. Right now it appears that OM won’t be in the NCAA. I’m not upset with that at all. If they sneak in, they’ll be shipped to some remote spot and be something like a 3 seed.
